271: 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

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September 15, 1963, should have been a typical Sunday at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. In the church basement, children busily prepared for youth Sunday. Five little girls, ranging in age from 11 to 14, were in the women’s bathroom, changing into choir robes and fixing their hair when an explosion rocked the church. Glass shattered. The church’s rear wall crumbled. The girls flew through the air. Upstairs, the adults panicked. They ran for their children. Four little girls died that day. There wasn’t much of a question as to who’d done this. For years, the KKK had bombed Black churches and Black people’s homes. They’d done so with little to no punishment from authorities. But surely they wouldn’t get away with killing children in church.

And now for a note about our process. For this episode, Kristin read a bunch of articles, then spat them back out in her very limited vocabulary. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:
“The Birmingham Church Bombing: Bombingham,” by Mark Gado for Crime Library
“Trial of bombing suspect begins,” by Jay Reeves for the Associated Press
“Alabamian guilty in ‘63 church blast that killed 4 girls,” by B. Drummond Ayres Jr. for the New York Times
“Chambliss guilty,” Associated Press
“Birmingham bomber Bobby Frank Cherry dies in prison at 74,” by Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb for the Washington Post
“Birmingham bomb case goes to jury,” by Howell Raines for the St Petersburg Times
“Ghosts of Alabama: The prosecution of Bobby Frank Cherry for the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church,” by Donald Q. Cochran for the Michigan Journal of Race and Law
“60 years ago, Alabama church bombing killed 4 girls and catalyzed a movement,” by DeNeen L. Brown for the Washington Post
“Congress honors victims of infamous Alabama church bombing,” by Debbie Elliott for NPR
“50 years after the bombing, Birmingham still subtly divided,” by Debbie Elliott for NPR
“Alabama Gov. apologizes to surviving ‘5th girl’ of 1963 KKK bombing,” by Vanessa Romo for NPR
“16th Street Baptist Church bombing,” National Park Service
“16th Street Baptist Church bombing,” entry on Wikipedia

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